


Acted Over

by pauraque



Category: Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF, Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
Genre: Anachronisms, Bondage, Canonical Character Death, Dreams, Knifeplay, M/M, Suicide, Surrealism, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:23:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pauraque/pseuds/pauraque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Brutus, there is always time — time to consider, time to speak, time to make his point in twenty ponderously balanced lines. For Cassius, there is barely time to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acted Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bette/gifts).



> I was intrigued by your request for kinky Brutus/Cassius, especially combined with the mention in your letter of hoping your writer wouldn't kill everybody — how do you honor that request in a source material where everybody dies? I hope you enjoy my take on it, and have a happy Yuletide!

_and find a time_  
 _Both meet to hear and answer such high things._

Cassius' foot taps involuntarily on the Senate floor, in and out of time with the ticking of his watch. As the senators conduct their business, they seem like players forming stately tableaux before him, deliberate and self-consciously grand.

Brutus fits well into the scene, smiling patiently, balanced as a scale. Cassius' eyes are ever drawn to him. He is nodding, inclining his head sagely towards whatever Caesar is explaining to him — right, of course he is. Cassius sighs sharply through his nose, sits back in his seat, stretches his arms out restlessly. It's as though it burns him to sit still, and he must shake out the fire from time to time.

He is rapping his fingertips in syncopation on his knees, and the senator beside him gives him a tight, dirty look, as though warning a fidgeting child to behave. Cassius allows himself a sneer, and the senator draws up haughtily, aquiline nose in the air.

At last the performance seems to be drawing to a close; men murmur and come down towards the door, Brutus following Caesar at a respectful distance, moving in measured, even steps.

As Cassius rises, he glances at his watch, and for a moment he thinks the second hand is spinning wildly as a compass in Magnesia. He blinks and looks again, and it is ordinary, though he still peers at it with some suspicion, feeling strangely unsure of whether it ought to be there.

But the sensation fades like deja vu, and now he is making his way out into the street, dodging and ducking between the milling senators who walk too slow, always too slow. The sun gleams overhead and shadows flicker through the trees along the avenue, growing longer and shorter by turns, as though days pass in minutes. It often seems that others live in a world of slow time, while Cassius flies from night to night and month to month, pulled forward, onward. Come, come to the Capitol...

There is no time to think of the horse-carts that wobble through the street, nor the sleek luxury cars that idle impatiently behind them. Scanning the traffic, he sees an open taxi and breaks into a run to meet it, unsurprised to find Brutus already inside. Cassius slides in beside him, and they nod to one another.

"Will you go see the order of the course?" he asks as he pulls the trailing end of his toga up around his ankles so it doesn't get caught when he shuts the car door.

 

_Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone_

Cassius sits awake on his bed, feet planted on the cold tile floor. Junia is fast asleep beside him. Rain falls in sheets down onto the roof and the awnings, and beneath that heavy sound, the clepsydra runs — a maddening tickle in Cassius' ear.

Junia is what keeps Cassius awake, more often than not. The heat of her body repels him like fire, suffocating him. Her mouth is softly open, and a strand of hair falls in a curve across her face, flickering rhythmically with her breath. If not for that, her sleep might be death, so deep does she slumber. Her sweet, round face is the face of her mother, and the face of her brother Brutus too. When she is so still, in his mind the bedclothes become a winding-sheet, and it is Brutus in the grave.

Cassius shoves himself up from the bed (Junia doesn't stir), scuffing his feet deliberately against the rough places in the floor. He creaks open the door to the balcony, and the din of the storm comes clear into focus, drowning out the water clock and Junia's little breaths.

He bangs his palms down onto the railing and grasps the wrought iron hard enough that it hurts. Cold water pounds down onto his knuckles from the awning above, out of time with his heart's drumming.

Through the rain falling like streaks of grey paint, through the droplets that spatter onto his glasses, he sees Romans scurrying like vermin in the streets, holding newspapers and pamphlets over their heads as they run for cover from the building storm. The grey is broken only by the fire of sunset, fearsomely violet over the Capitol. The picture of that makes Cassius' chest burn, and he must squeeze his eyes shut against it.

And when he does that, the sky's fierce music lifts his feet from off the ground, and he dreams that he is the bird of night, spreading his wings to fly as a thunder-struck raven through the painted sky. Taking wing, he soars through the city, dodging round apartment blocks, beneath archways. He does not know what it feels like to fly, so in Cassius' dream it is like swimming in oceanic swells. The rain and the darkness envelop and thrill him as he careens this way and that, conquering the wind.

The sky is made of vast screens of wood, colored blue and purple in the colossal brushstrokes of the gods, and the thunder echoes like sheet metal shaken in the wings, more real than real. Each time he blinks, the city changes — now Rome as she stands, now a wasteland of crumbling ruins, now a strange land of tall buildings and glittering lights. But whenever he wheels round to look more closely at it, circumscribe it in his view, it shrinks away from his eyes, laughing at him, mocking his vision. Still, his heart is bursting as he dives down among the houses, flying into men's windows and whispering in their ears. No matter what it looks like, it is always Rome.

When he arrives at Brutus' house, eager to fly in, he dashes his head against the window and falls fluttering to earth. Dazed and bruised, he rises again, and wheels round. Brutus is within, sleeping still as death, but his window is blocked by a glass more clear and perfect than could possibly be real, seeming designed to fool the birds and make them crack their skulls upon it.

Cassius opens his eyes, and he is himself again, standing sober on his balcony in the rain, his hands still gripping the railing, red and numb. It hurts when he uncurls his fingers, and he draws a sharp inward breath, dizzy as though he'd been holding his lungs still.

He goes back into the bedroom, shaking the rain from off his hands, and Junia is still sleeping, unstirred. Fire rises in him, his heart twists, his lips curl into a sneer. He snatches his cloak and moves to go, to run out into the storm.

The clepsydra is on the table where his cloak was left, and it is dry. Not only run out, but bone-dry, as though the water has had time to vanish into the air.

 

_Shall I entreat a word?_

He awakens with Brutus on the floor of his chamber, wrapped round each other like lianas. Their arms are twined together, both pale, and for a moment Cassius cannot tell whose arm is whose; when he curls his fingers, he is surprised to see which hand moves.

Brutus is still sleeping, a gentle frown of worry on his brow. To be still beside him is growing uncomfortable — pins and needles tingle in Cassius' limbs — but he has wanted this for a long time (he cannot recall what it was he said that changed Brutus' mind) and he is not sure lately what is real and what is not, so he fears to stir and break the dream.

Cassius sleeps again and wakes again, eyes dry. He dreams that he is together with Brutus in the mouth of the same beast, their headboard its rows of jagged teeth, its tongue their marriage-bed. He wakes from that afraid, but Brutus is still heavy on him, his breath tickling Cassius' arm.

This seems real, but Brutus has a candle clock in his chamber, and sometimes it is burnt down to a puddle with the wick guttering out, while other times it is nearly new, the red wax trickling down like sweat.

Intermittently he remembers that they are supposed to be getting up, that there is justice to apportion, blood to spill. But here and now, the urgency of it fades; it seems like a tiresome daily chore that Cassius has done over until it is done to death.

The cock crows, and Cassius awakens in his own bed, angry at himself.

 

_I will hear Cassius, and compare their reasons_  
 _When severally we hear them rendered._

Blood is drying like rust on Cassius' hands, and blood is pounding in his ears as he struggles to be heard above the noise of the mumbling crowd, straining his voice shouting.

He tries to make them listen, but they are like an audience who are only there because they're supposed to be, to hear this presumably educative oratory of his. He is sweating coldly, and it is so bad that he finds himself hoping that this is a dream, that he will wake up and get another chance to perform it over.

But it doesn't matter. Coming down the street, he can hear the crowd baying like dogs, and there is nothing for it but to be swept away in the howling pack, and go on, on, on.

 

_And my heart too._  
 _O Brutus!_  
 _What's the matter?_

They stand facing each other in the tent. The sparks of Brutus' anger have faded to a soft glow in his eyes, and his lips are parted, breath a little ragged. After passion comes exhaustion, both of them wrung out and drained.

"I did not think you could have been so angry." The words feel dry and paper-thin as they pass over Cassius' tongue, and a strange shiver runs through his body, an unknown smile curls upon his lips.

Brutus hesitates a moment, then places his broad hands on Cassius' shoulders. His touch is like sliding into a bath that is nearly too hot, a burn that almost can't be borne. Cassius cannot stand to look at him; his face is too kind, too full of a brother's love.

Cassius shuts his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them, Brutus is before him still, but they are no longer in a tent, but in a vast room, dark and silent. Brutus looks different somehow — were his eyes always thus, green as a Celt, or were they once brown? — but when their gazes meet, there is no doubt that he is Brutus. Cassius sees him within.

His hands press down on Cassius' shoulders, and Cassius's knees buckle; he sits down hard in a metal folding chair that has appeared beneath him. Its rubber feet groan sharply as it shifts. Cassius looks down and sees that the floor is of wood, scuffed and marked with peeling bits of masking tape.

Brutus touches Cassius' chin and brings his gaze up. He is smiling his sad, innocent smile. He moves aside, and behind him Cassius' eyes focus on a small metallic gleam — it is his own dagger, stuck point-first into the floor, with dark and heavy curtains beyond it.

Brutus' feet make long, hollow echoes as he steps slowly round to the back of the chair. His hands appear in Cassius' peripheral vision and lift his glasses from his face; the dagger and the curtains disappear in thick blurs. A breath passes, and Cassius makes a small, startled noise when something touches his lips. It is the rim of a wooden bowl; the heavy scent of red wine fills his senses, intoxicating him. Brutus tilts the bowl, and Cassius' hands try to come up to meet it, but he finds that they are now bound behind him, tied to the slick aluminum of the chair.

He cranes his neck to drink, but when he does so, the wine shrinks down and away like the torment of Tantalus.

Brutus' voice prompts inquisitively at his ear: "In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius."

Cassius pulls at his bonds, the rope pinching his thin wrists. It sounds so reasonable — everything sounds reasonable when Brutus says it — and he knows the words that should follow like a ritual, but the undrunk wine swirls round his head and makes him too dizzy to grasp them.

"My heart... is thirsty—"

That is as much as he manages, and then his tongue is too thick to go on. Brutus laughs very softly — his rare laugh, too, is like Junia's — and the bowl is drawn teasingly away before it's finished its purpose.

Brutus is then before him again, Cassius' dagger somehow in his hand now. Cassius squints; Brutus brings it close to his eyes so he can see it, and then touches his finger to the knifetip and pushes. Cassius flinches, expecting blood, but instead the blade quietly clicks and slides down into its hilt.

Cassius blinks, and then Brutus is sinking to his knees before him, but not as a servant, as something else entirely. Cassius struggles again, feeling the pull and strain of it at his shoulders. He can feel Brutus pick up the hem of his clothing, and he does not know what Brutus is doing. Nonetheless he tries to press into it, thirsting for touch, only to find that his ankles, too, are bound.

With the dagger, Brutus begins to cut Cassius' clothing. The tearing cloth sounds thunderously loud in the unfocused dark, and Cassius jerks, making the chair skid again. Silent, Brutus goes on, and Cassius feels a draught at his legs, embarrassment at his skinny pale calves, his knobby knees exposed to the air. He pulls again at his bonds, struggling either to escape or to submit, he knows not which.

As his clothing is shredded and falls away, he does not even know what he was wearing. Now a toga, now a business suit, now a military uniform, now something else entirely. It is all cut away and hangs in tatters, baring him down to nothing but the true man. His skin grows cold, but inside he is burning from every fleeting brush of Brutus' fingers against his knee, his stomach, his chest. He feels, too, the cold steel of the blade, its blunt side sometimes sliding in a shiver along his thigh, or the point faintly scratching at his arm. Brutus never draws blood — he never would.

Cassius wants to surrender to this in every moment, in every breath. He leans as far forward as his bonds allow, blind as a puppy and desiring, helpless. He wants to feel Brutus' hands firmly on him, squeezing hard and bruising, striking like flint on steel. A drop of sweat trickles down the back of his neck, and he shudders deeply.

A clock chimes the hour, and the lights come up — Cassius sees now that this is a theatre, with empty seats for the audience. Brutus is standing there, dagger in hand, gazing down at him with head tilted to one side, curiously innocent, as though he hasn't any idea what Cassius is doing tied there with his clothes torn to shreds.

Cassius blinks, and awakens like coming up for air after diving long in the sea. They are standing in the tent again, and Brutus' look has not changed.

 

_Portia, art thou gone?_

As he rides to Philippi, Cassius feels a strange calm upon him, the reins easy in his hands, not needing to twist and fidget. He is on a road that has no turns, and he is accustomed to that by now. The destination can't be changed; it's only a matter of how fast you want to get there.

He sees Portia in the corner of his eye as he rides along, but does not try to look at her. He's tried to look at these dreams, and nothing ever comes of it. Cassius has always walked close beside Death, the only woman whose touch he does not shrink from. She, at least, will never refuse him.

He wonders if Portia's come to ensure her husband's faithfulness after her death, and his lip curls in a smirk. No need for that. Portia was always first, in everything. First in Brutus' heart, and first in shedding blood, trickling down her thigh in the way of all women. He wonders if he ought to ask her how she plucked up the courage to swallow coals — Cassius has too much fire in him as it is, and would fain have less.

He does glance on Portia's ghost, just once, as the sun is rising. He looks too quickly, though, and cannot tell if her bloodless face shows pity or sympathy.

 

_If we do meet again, we'll smile indeed_

The dust of the ground at Philippi is cinnabar-red, and when the wind whips it up it gets everywhere, sticking to horses, tents, and men. Cassius sees Pindarus trying to calm a nervous warhorse, which jerks its frothy head; Pindarus' hand leaves streaks of ochre on the horse's flank.

The wind whipping about Cassius' legs, he climbs the hilltop lookout, the ground rocky and unbalancing beneath his feet. He squints into the distance. By this time, he expects the scene to change, to show him another way of seeing. But the wind and the blood-earth are surprisingly present, defying Cassius' expectation that they will fade into dream, into lost time.

Still, he almost does not hear himself as he speaks, knowing all his words before he says them, curiously detached. He has been here before. He has done this before. It has only become clearer over the past few hours (days, months) that it always ends this way, brought ever sharper into focus the closer he comes to the appointed time. He can speak nothing of it, because his words have already been written. The words are always the same, but there is much more to life than words — there are glances, touches, kisses and embraces. Brutus has kissed him before; he remembers that now.

When Pindarus stabs him, Cassius expects the blade to click and collapse into the hilt, and is faintly surprised when instead it pierces his heart. It happens slowly, and he has long moments to consider it, until his death begins to seem longer than his life.

As he dies, he hears people coming, men and women, whispering his name. They speak Latin, Greek, English and Italian, and they speak the words of Cassius' life that Brutus never found the time to say. He is not afraid, because he knows now (as he has learned many times before) that to die is merely to go backstage, watching and waiting for the next performance.

Cassius will try to remember. And next time, he will try harder to change the way it ends.


End file.
